Clinton’s email mess troubling

Express-News Editorial Board

Published 3:46 pm, Tuesday, August 25, 2015

At the very least, Hillary Clinton’s decision to use a private email account and server for official secretary of state business is a disturbing lapse of judgment. It boggles the mind that someone with legitimate presidential aspirations could be so reckless.

In one fell swoop, Clinton’s email maneuver simultaneously embraced secrecy while holding the potential to threaten national security.

By using a private email account and server for official public business, Clinton took her emails out of the public record. It also allowed her, and her lawyers and aides, to dictate which emails were public and private as calls — and records requests — for their release mounted.

In December, she turned over more than 30,000 emails, for example. But it turned out she had deleted nearly 32,000 other private emails. It’s unclear if all of those emails were truly private — and an FBI probe hopefully will answer that question.

What is clear is the State Department review of about 20 percent of her emails found 305 may have potentially classified information. That doesn’t mean all the emails contain classified information or were necessarily classified at the time. But it is questionable. This is potentially sensitive information being stored on a private server. Why take that risk?

While the political stakes dominate the news and discussion of the likely Democratic presidential nominee’s situation, Clinton’s email woes also could highlight the government’s abuse of secrecy. There is a good chance many of these emails should never have been classified. The controversy also raised some discussion about the sorry state of information technology at the State Department.

Those considerations are worth bearing in mind as the story unfolds, but they don’t justify Clinton’s poor decision. One that could have put the country at risk and undoubtedly will dog her throughout the presidential campaign.